Boston Medical Center is ahead of the curve on alarm fatigue

The Joint Commission, a nonprofit organization that accredits more than 20,000 health care organizations and programs in the U.S., has mandated that starting in January 2014, hospitals nationwide are required to reduce "alarm fatigue," defined as "when providers become desensitized to the constant beeps from monitors that could result in a failure to respond (or failure to respond quickly enough) to alarms indicative of a potential life-threatening condition." So it's a good thing that Boston Medical Center (BMC) made this a priority years ago. BMC completed a pilot study in late 2013 that resulted in an 89 percent decrease in audible alarms in a cardiac/telemetry unit and was asked to present their findings during a Joint Commission webinar that thousands of participants from hospitals across the country watched.